Lady Parts Justice are defenders of Repro Rights. Inclusive. Hilarious. Intersectional. Fun as Fuck.

Who is Lady Parts Justice?

LPJ is a team of comedians, cultural influencers and technologists who are using humor and outrage to expose the bad and elect the good. This group of fiercely feminist activists seek to stop the rollback of reproductive freedom by creating media that entertains, while educating Americans about abortion rights and the unceasing deluge of laws threatening them. They also offer direct support to abortion providers and patients through clinic visits and service projects.

The Film

The film begins with the election of Donald Trump, and focuses on LPJ’s reaction and strategy to protect reproductive health rights in the polarized political climate that was ushered in on November 8, 2016. We follow LPJ as they prep and participate in the NYC Women’s March, enlisting over 5000 supporters to stand with them to protect the rights of women and people of all genders.

We look back at how the organization began four years ago, taking its name from the politically correct phrase for “Vagina” that former Michigan State Rep Lisa Brown was told to use when arguing against Transvaginal Ultrasound Legislation. (Her male colleagues insisted the word ‘Vagina’ should be replaced by the less obscene ‘Lady Parts.’) Using archival media clips, we move from LPJ’s founding to its present break-back pace to protect women’s reproductive rights and serve the doctors, healthcare providers and volunteers who risk everything for this work.

Our camera follows Winstead making national media appearances, and LPJ’s launch of a video of The Pill as an homage to School House Rock on the day the Gorsuch Supreme Court hearing started. We see intensely personal service missions that LPJ makes to abortion clinics, including the beautiful vérité moment when a staff member in an Mississippi clinic is driven to tears by a visit from an LPJ volunteer to deliver a hug and hamburger. The simple kindness is an unexpected respite from a long day of scared teens and fighting back the angry anti-choice demonstrators at the door.

This film also examines how reproductive rights are framed by the media by delving deep into the personality, actions and plans of Lizz Winstead, one of the greatest political media creators and media critics of our generation. The film will feature verite scenes and clips with longtime friends, colleagues and supporters of Lizz’s brand of activism including members of Congress, television news hosts, and some of the most important politically engaged comedians and musicians of our time.  

As the Right intensifies their unpopular, yet unrelenting attack on abortion rights, Winstead and the team face a sobering question: How does LPJ educate a public who agrees with them and yet does so little to help ensure that women will continue to have reproductive freedom?  

The Answer: Lady Parts Justice is going on the road and we’re going with them!

Lizz and LPJ decide to take their message directly to the people through the USO-esque Vagical Mystery Tour, a 45-day tour that takes the LPJ team directly into hostile territory.  In each town on the tour, LPJ will provide emotional support to the abortion clinic staffers along with handy work to mend a broken fence or a waiting room in need of TLC. The following day, the best and the brightest comedians and musicians put on a show that will not only will raise funds for the clinic, but more importantly, build an army of local volunteers before the LPJ team rolls out of town and onto the next city.

We’ll follow Lizz and LPJ in their brilliantly hilarious, resourceful efforts to fund the tour: from a Silicon Valley tech money fundraising quest, to the lemonade stand pitch video created for their crowd funding campaign.  We’ll experience the roller coaster trajectory that takes them from renting a large tour bus to finding the entire team cramming into a van headed for the deep South.  We’ll be there because we believe in what they do. No other organization is doing the kind of work that LPJ does. They advocate for all of the women, girls and all non-binary people in our lives and making us laugh along the way.

The tour begins in Atlanta GA where director Ruth Leitman grew roots as a filmmaker and activist. It continues through battleground cities in the south and throughout the Midwest. It ends in Louisville, Kentucky, where the Lady Parts Justice team throw themselves into a high stakes fight to save Kentucky’s last remaining abortion clinic.

We’ll be there for workshops that train activists on the frontline across rural America, the altercations with anti-choice protestors and politicians, and LPJ’s efforts that stop at nothing to help turn the conservative tide as we head towards the 2018 election cycle.

Why this film now? 

The urgency of this film could not be greater. Access to birth control and abortion is aggressively being stripped away by a hostile administration on an ideological crusade.

Planned Parenthood provides crucial health services that so many may not get otherwise. But many do not know that Planned Parenthood provides only 30% of all abortion in the U.S.  The remaining 70% of abortions are performed at independently run, underfunded clinics in small towns all over America. They are staffed with doctors and nurses who perform this health service to women at great risk to themselves. With the average age of US doctors being 68, and with great disincentives for new young doctors to become abortion providers due to the astronomical cost of malpractice insurance, these physicians are literally dying out.  The training for these doctors is scarce.  We are facing a tremendous shortage of physicians willing and able to perform safe, legal abortions.

Through the lens of Lady Parts Justice, we delve into the threat of the Trump admistration overturning Roe v. Wade the most critical women’s rights issue, but more importantly the draconian legislation in many states that primarily effect low income and women of color.  These are the laws that sow the seeds if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Highlighting the absurdity of this backwards movement like no one else can, Winstead galvanizes the brightest, most compassionate and hilarious foot soldiers of the last half-century, a group so fierce, they hold nothing back. This is also the story of the rise of intersectional feminism, as it asks the questions of one’s privilege “Who may participate in protest and how?” As LPJ faces an opposition of right wing government and uninformed citizens so belligerent and strange in this modern world, whose aim is to set back the civil rights of women half a century, our narrative becomes a cocktail of the humor and factual horror involved in preserving basic human rights for all women and anyone with a uterus.

Project Status

This film is currently in development with Kartemquin Films. We have already shot nine days to capture essential moments of the story and to create a fundraising demo. We will finish this film on an aggressive schedule so that it can be used to help educate and mobilize people before the 2018 election. The heart of the story will take place on the tour, where we will be able to see Lizz and her team’s passion and compassion directly impact the people they are driven to help. It’s absolutely essential that we are able to join them on this journey, giving us only five weeks to raise the necessary funds for this portion of production.

Project Timeline:

November 2016

Research and development begins.

January- March 2017

Principal Photography begins; nine days filming completed in New York, Illinois, Indiana and Texas.

April–May 2017

Fundrasing, additional filming days, pre-production for the tour.

June 1–July 15 2017  

Lady Parts Justice Vagical Mystery Tour Filmed.

July 2017

Feature Film Rough Cut commences.

November 2017

Principal Photography Complete.

February 2018

Fine Cut Commences with Sound, Color, Graphics work.

April/May 2018

Film Premieres.

May- November 2018

Festival Run, Grassroots Outreach, Special Screenings, House Party Screenings leading up to Election Day November 6^th 2018.

Budget and Fundraising

Our team’s fundraising strategy includes grant seeking, crowd funding, grassroots fundraising and individual donors. Due to the urgency of the story and the high profile of Lizz Winstead, we will also approach both equity investors and broadcasters for production funds. Our goal for this Seed & Spark crowd funding campaign is $16,550 to get started immediately, while we are actively trying to raise the rest as we go. Although this number is a fraction of the overall budget, we are determined to make this film. This amount is what we need to get started. You can see some of the totals of the full budget in our wish list section of the campaign.

Films can mobilize and make change. We’ve seen it and we’ve done it. 

Film festivals, premieres and prizes are sexy! And after many years of independent filmmaking, I've luckily had my share of these accolades.  But I also know that films can mobilize people. It’s truly one of the best (if not the best) things I have ever experienced as a filmmaker. We did it with our immigration film Tony & Janina’s American Wedding when we were able to use the film to raise awareness and help reunite a family. Our film won a jury prize at The Chicago International Film Festival and then became an International breaking news story. We will use the skills we learned from that experience along with a strong outreach and engagement plan to use this film to mobilize around protecting women’s reproductive rights. We plan to use this film to turn pro-choice malaise into pro-choice action at the polls. YES WE CAN!

From the Golden Days to the Dark Ages

Ever since Roe v. Wade was passed, reproductive heath rights have been under attack. 

The election of Donald Trump and the policies that he and the conservative right are advancing are an all out war on women's reproductive rights. There is now a perfect storm with Trump’s new found power to elect conservative Supreme Court Justices.  Roe v. Wade has never been more at risk and states have become more emboldened than ever to create and pass anti-choice, anti-birth control legislation. Ohio, Kentucky, Texas and other states are introducing ways to legislate women's uteri at an alarming and increasing frequency, while this story often goes uncovered in the national media.  As media creators themselves, LPJ is doing everything they can to keep this issue front and center, and our film will help deliver their message to a new and larger audience.  

If you’ve read this far, we need you to join us

With this film we will make noise, and become a thorn in the side of the obstructionists of justice. We plan to have the film completed as we head toward the midterm election in 2018. Join us in being part of the resistance. I am so excited to be working with LPJ and Kartemquin Films on this documentary. I started this film with zero funds, but with the urgency to create something we can all use as a tool for protecting women’s rights in this horrific political climate. We’ll travel across America with the most compassionate, whip smart, hilarious change makers you’ll ever meet. 

Please contribute to Seed and Spark’s #100DaysOfDiversity campaign for our film, 

Lady Parts Justice in the New World Order.

Please back this project if you can, with as much as you can financially.

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Please follow the campaign. If we can obtain 500 follows, Seed & Spark will unleash some amazing gifts that will greatly help this production.

Thank You!!!